what health food to eat

alright! this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com.today we have another exciting episode for you. as you guys can see, i’m here in themiddle of a city. you know there are sidewalks and concrete and streets all the way around.but guess what? even though there are lawns and all this kind of stuff growing, there’sstill food growing actually in the lawn, believe it or not! so this is the episode you guysare going to want to know. i believe everyone in the world should watch this episode. soif you have friends, be sure to pass them along this link so that they could watch it.because this is truly the video for people who want to eat home grown food or local foodfrom their area without even having to grow a garden. this is completely amazing, andi know some of you guys are like, what?! how

can you eat food without growing a garden?i’m going to give my garden up. well, i don’t say give your garden up by any means,because i think growing a garden is still one of the best things you can do. but thereare a lot of wild foods you can eat. now, i haven’t had an episode on wild foods yetbecause it’s very important when your harvesting foods is to harvest the right wild foods becauseyou can get sick and very ill by eating the wrong ones. so i’m bringing in an experttoday, katrina blair, who has been a wild food forager for many years now. literallywrote a book on the subject. and today, this episode, one of the most important ones i’veever done, because we’re going to share with you guys the top 13 wild foods that groweverywhere in the world! so i don’t care

if you’re in the netherlands, i know i haveviewers in netherlands, hey, what’s up. or australia, what’s going on, or southamerica, or the caribbean, or here in the united states, or in canada, eh? you know,these foods grow everywhere. wherever there’s been man living and the disturbed soil, theseweeds find their way to your environment and then you can harvest them and eat them. sothat’s why this video is so important. i’m so excited about it. the one thing i wantto encourage you guys right now before harvesting anything wild, especially if it’s from yourneighbors lawn that you don’t know how things are being grown. you want to make sure it’snot sprayed with chemicals, pesticides, there’s not like it’s a major freeway where there’sso much cars going by. but for the people

that are always talking about, “john, howcan you eat the stuff right growing next to the freeway or the street?!” right? welli want to say, i’ve driven through central california and there’s a lot of farms, literallyon the freeway, off the highway 5 that cars are going by, but you’re not questioningthe produce grown in the stores, but you’re questioning the wild foods growing in youryard? so think about that one. but, anyways, i think wild foods, local foods, always betterthan things have been shipped in. we’re also going to learn about this a little bitlater in the episode. so without further ado, let’s go ahead and introduce the expertkatrina blair, the wild food forager harvester who is going to share with you guys some ofthese wild foods that are available near you

without growing a garden. so now we’re herewith the expert wild food forager katrina blair. she’s from turtle lake refuge indurango, colorado. and the cool thing about katrina, i mean, she doesn’t look like she’sbeen harvesting and wild foraging and educating people about wild foods for the last 30 years,haha! but she has. so, she really knows her stuff. even at this lawn right here, there’sfood we could eat on this lawn. so we’re going to have her share some of these wildfoods with us. so, katrina, what’s the first wild food that we’re just seeing in abundancehere? oh my goodness, well, thanks for having me john. it’s nice to be here. the firstfood that’s super obvious that’s growing here in the crack is the dandelion. and thedandelions are growing all over the world,

in lawns, in sidewalk cracks, even in thesidewalk crack of san francisco. and i actually appreciated what you said in your introductionthat some of these wild foods, because they’re so vibrant in their nature, like they’recore seed has this resilient genetics in it. it’s going to survive. and as humans, whenwe put that in us, we are what we eat, and we get our resilient seed that knows how tosurvive in this crazy constant changing climate. and so by eating even this wild food fromthe sidewalk crack of san francisco, maybe way more nutritious in the grocery store.and i appreciate your perspective, because i hold that same perspective. so here we havethe wild dandelion. here’s the dandelion flower. it actually is closed up because ithasn’t seen the sun yet, and they open with

the sun. but the entire plant of the dandelionis edible. the greens, the stem, the flowers, the roots. it’s a little bitter, but thebitters are what tone our organs and give our liver that exercise to release toxins.and really make our whole body more efficient. so eating, everyone’s homework from thismoment, is to go out and eat a dandelion every time you see it. like, once a day if it’sin the season. and of course, what i do, is i gather them and then dry them and grindthem into a green powder for the winter. so i still have my wild minerals. because theseroots go down quite deep, and they pull up minerals that we don’t access in generalcommercially grown foods. awesome! so, katrina, i know you could use the dandelion root asa coffee substitute. i don’t recommend you

guys drink coffee, but how can you use dandelionroot as a coffee substitute? well, i love to do is i harvest the roots and dry themand then chop them up, wash them, chop them up, dry them. and then i grind it up in acoffee grinder, and then i put it in a little matte gourd, and then i use my little bombillastraw, and then i sip on it in the morning. i pour a little hot water on it. and it’sjust this divine, bitter drink that really makes me whole system have energy in the morning.but it’s different than a coffee energy that crashes. this is just a really sustainedenergy because it’s making your whole system more efficient and more alkaline, and youget this amazing life force vitality from the enzymes and the minerals from the roots.awesome, awesome! so let’s learn about the

next wild food from katrina. and the nextone is all the wild grasses with their 8 amino acids. as a survival food it could save yourasses! so grass is one of the thirteen. dandelion is one, grass is another. and all the grassesare edible. however, we’re here in las vegas, and this grass is our favorite here, we don’tknow. but it looks pretty pristine, which indicates in probably has been applied, hadthe herbicides and kind of a weed and feed chemical fertilizer and herbicide apply. andthat’s really not food. so we’re going to go find some wild grass that is more grassthat i would like to eat. but this grass, if it wasn’t sprayed, would be very edible.what i do in the morning, like in the spring time. i’ll go out with my blender, and i’lljust have some scissors. and i’ll just cut

the grass and put it right in my blender.and i add water and throw in an apple, blend it up and strain out the fibers. and theni’m getting all that complete protein, an immense amount of minerals and vitamins thatcome from the green chlorophyll and grass. awesome, yeah, i mean another way to use thegrass is to put it in your mouth and chew it and spit out the pulp. or, even betteryet, in my opinion, get a slow single juicer such as the omega nc800 to really extractout all the juice out of the nutritious leaves of the grass. fabulous. all right katrina,let’s go ahead and head to the backyard where we can actually eat some this grass.so now we’re in another area of the yard. looks like we got some nice baby tender grassto eat. and katrina, why is this grass better

than the other grass? no, this is not thesame other kind of grass you guys might be thinking. haha! yeah, this is a wild varietyof grass that is a young tender grass that’s coming up and is actually at the ideal stageto nibble on, to chow down. and i gotta give it a taste too. hahaha! there we go. wildforager right there. and when you start to chew this grass, like the flavors tell yourbody immediately, wow! it is packed with nutrition. and the chlorophyll in it. it feels so good,you can feel the protein building your muscles. it is how you get so strong and muscular,by eating grass! i mean, think about it. if you guys are eating cows or meat or animals.i mean, you’re not getting the protein from them directly. your getting them from thefood they ate. and if they’re factory fed

lot cows or whatever, they’re eating geneticallymodified soil which i do not recommend. free range cows, eating grass. but i say lets eliminatethe cow, let’s just eat the grass. and that is exactly the wisest way to go. in this world,go straight to the direct sources of protein and don’t get that middle step that hasa lot of toxins in it. you can move that one out of the way and go direct. yeah, i meanthe other thing about the animal agriculture, its so intensive on the resources and justnot good for the planet. not sustainable, you know, for all the people in the planet.but there’s grass everywhere. it’s the highest source of protein. we’ve got densersources in animal meat products, but, those actually concentrate toxins. so going to thehigher source, which is almost the first on

the chain, we’re avoiding all the toxinsthat get stored in these animals. but going direct to get our protein from greens it theway to go. the other thing i’ve heard, katrina, tell me if this is true or not, that the grassesabsorb like 90 plus minerals, you know, because they just take it all in. 98, is the bestthat it’s been written, out of the 108 minerals available on the earth. grass can do 98 ofthem. into their blades. and that’s if it’s in the soil, haha! right. well, this is actuallyquite better. i’d rather have this than actual wheat grass from my local health foodjoint. and this is free. this is a fabulous source. and what i love about eating wildfoods, right? growing on the earth is that, you make a direct connection. because theseplants are incredibly intelligent beings that

live outside their whole life. their seedscame from who knows where, flying around the world, landed here, their roots go down, andare connected to all the microorganisms in the soil. and all of a sudden when we putthat into our body, we become as smart as this grass. and this grass is so smart. andso the more you eat wild, the word your wild instincts of how to survive come alive. wow!yeah. eat some grass, get smart! everybody that has kids, make sure your kids eat somegrass every day. katrina, besides just chewing on it, what would be another good way to eatit, would it be just to dry the baby blades of grass in like a dehydrator and then blendthem up in a high speed blender, like a vitamix, or a coffee grinder? just grind up and haveyour own green powders. because i mean, they

sell these green powders for i don’t know,40, 50 dollars a pound at the health food store. why not make your own? yeah, and whati notice when i do that with all the wild greens. like all 13 of the wild plants, imake green powders with. and with grass, it depends. you want to make sure if you’regoing to do that, pick the most tender grass that breaks down. because when it gets reallya lot of cellulose, your body doesn’t need that much cellulose. that’s why we juiceit or spit it out and chew it. that kind of thing. but the tender grass—exactly. itmakes great green powder. and here’s the little fiber that i spit out of getting allthe nutrients out of it! all right, with that katrina, let’s go ahead and go the nextedible green. another one, wow! look at that.

so, i happen to be staying at darryl elliot’shouse which happens to be the vegan headquarters of couch surfing. if you’re ever in lasvegas, go to couch surfing vegan. that site, and he’s got a great room. and he’s anamazing host. so we’re at his little front yard garden here. and the next wild food isa thistle. don’t be afraid of the prickle of thistle, drink down the juice, it’llmake you wanna whistle! like a wild seed ringing through the air, waving its arms like it justdon’t care. put ‘em up! hahah! so this one happens to be a sow thistle. and all thethistles are edible. and this on eis actually one of the more choice edible thistles thatyou can just eat on the spot, because its not very prickly and its very delicious. sothis is a sow thistle. and it’s so good.

now i want to talk. we’re harvesting oneof these young baby tender greens, like, is that some of the best ways to harvest thesewild foods, so they’re more tender and they’re literally more nutritious? yeah, actuallythe young greens, like microgreens, have as much as 40 percent more nutrients availablethan mature vegetables. so yeah, if you can get them young, do. but you know, it all ages.they’re going to have different benefits. wow, you guys might be buying mescaline mixat your local health food store for like 5, 6 dollars a pound. man, this stuff tastesway better to me and it’s much more vibrant. let’s talk about the energy life force insome of these still living plants as you harvest them and eat them. so that’s the magicalthing about eating wild, directly from the

earth, is a little goes a long way. becauseyou’re getting it at its absolute most vital state. when things get harvested from a gardenor big farms and trucked over to a supermarket, it could be a week, or a month, who knows,that they have been taken from the ground and put on the shelf. by the time we eat it,the vitality keeps going down. when we just put it right in our mouth from the earth,it’s at the peak. and you feel it. the energy, the inspiration, and the clarity is reallynoticeable, to the point of ecstatic joy, haha! wow, amazing. some of the studies i’veseen. within 24 hours, up to 50 percent of certain nutrients can be lost in the food,so you know, harvest it fresh. and you don’t have to eat as much. like a little does goa lot longer, because how rich it is. awesome,

let’s go ahead to the next wild green growinghere at darryl’s place. and it’s only two feet away, this way. all right, so nowwe’re going to share with you guys the next wild food that’s growing here! but checkit out, i mean. you might think, oh man that guys place looks really cool! there are allthese wild foods growing. but, his whole backyard is like, not planted out in a garden, andnot planted out. i encourage him to plant a garden, but he doesn’t have the time.and this is one of the joys of the wild foods. they just grow on their own without you eventending to them! you guys could be eating. all right katrina, so what are we lookingat here? okay, so here we have a wild mustard. all the wild mustards with their petals offour are spicy and sweet and enough to make

you want more. their flowers come in yellow,pink, purple, and white. enough to get the creative juices flowing into the night. sothis is the wild mustard that’s so delicious and succulent. it’s actually reseeded. theseare the old seed pods. oh yeah, here. let’s take a look. this is a big plant above it,and you guys could see up at the top, this is where it goes to the seed. and i thinkthis one had some seed pods on there. yeah, and these seed pods are load with tiny littleyellow mustard seeds. and there’s a saying that goes, you know, if you have the strengthof a mustard seed, you can move mountains. and these little mustard seeds are actuallyedible too. you could make your own mustard sauce or just sprinkle them in your smoothiefor that stimulation of circulation, moving

the blood, and try those! they’re delicious.these are literally micro greens for free. you guys could go down to trader joe’s andbuy one ounce of micro greens for like six bucks! or just come out to your friend’sbackyard that doesn’t spray anything. mmm! wow, these are some of the best mustard greensi’ve tasted. so mild and delicious. they’re so good! so spicy and… powerful. i mean,when they get older they get even more spicy, so that’s why i like to harvest them atthe young stage. now another thing i want to talk about, katrina, is because you know,there’s a little seed pod we saw right here. another thing i want to encourage you guys,and we’ll have a good offer at the end of this, so stay tuned for the end. but if youidentify 100 percent wild foods that you know

what it is and you identify the plant. likewe know this is mustard. you should harvest these seed pods and make a bed, or a littlegarden at home, and take these seeds and spread them in your garden. if you’re not goingto have a garden where you control the soil and grow in good soil, which we’ll talkabout at the end of this video, you could just take these and sprinkle them out in youryard. if you find these at a park, right, oh that’s mustard seeds! bring them home!sprinkle them all around your yard! or, don’t sprinkle them around your neighbor’s yard,because they might get some weeds that you could eat, if they don’t spray! but youhave these foods easily that are just going to survive in nature. because they are survivors!and let stalk about that, katrina, for a second.

the survival instinct of these wild foods.why is it so important for us to get these into us? so the amazing things about thesethirteen wild plants is that they grow everywhere around human civilization. and their nicheis our disturbance. and so we make the most amazing symbiotic relationship, where humansare the best disturbers of ground on the planet, we’re really good at that. and then thesewild weeds, that’s their niche, that’s where they’re going to grow. so now matterwhere we live in the world, these wild plants are following our footsteps. and they cansurvive in very inhospitable conditions. they can survive at high altitudes, like as highas 12,000 feet. they can go all the way to sea level, be really cold, like in the arctic.or really hot like in hawaii or japan, or

philippines, or las vegas. haha! also dry,they can handle dry drought climates like here, or really lush places. so their abilitiesto survive in diverse conditions is amazing. and when we eat them, it teaches us how todo that. survive in diverse situations. i’m a survivor, hahah! and also, too, i mean,another thing to note, is that you know, if you aren’t a survivalist and all this kindof stuff, you know, you definitely need to know these plants inside and out, becausethey’ll be anywhere that you could literally be in the world! and i’m actually on a littletraveling right now. i’m kind of teaching around, and what i love is that no matterwhere i go, i have my garden! i just go and in the mornings i go wander and find the cracksand the weeds. and that’s where i get my

greens each day that are fresh. and that isvery empowering to know that you can just eat wherever you are in the world. i mean,think if every homeless person that’s begging money on the corner knew about these plants,i mean. instead of giving them money, give them this book that katrina wrote so thatthey can empower themselves to eat their own food! they’ll be a lot healthier becauseof it, and it’ll actually give them something to do. yahoo! thank you john. all right solet’s take a look at the next wild food growing here. so we have to walk down thestreet actually to find this next wild green. and you know it was actually a bit difficultbecause it looks like people’s lawns on this street have been spraying some kind ofherbicide to keep their grass nice. so they

don’t have all these weeds growing up. andkatrina, let’s talk herbicides and spraying lawns, and why that’s probably not the bestidea to do. yeah, one of the biggest reasons is that it really compromises the honey beeand all the wild pollinator’s immune system. and then they have trouble, big trouble, suchas colony collapse and all of that. the wild weeds actually have so much nectar and pollenthat the bees forage on. so just for that reason alone, we need our weeds and we definitelydon’t want to spray anything on our wild land. even our lawns, like in our yards. anythinglike that. but then, you know the wild plants, they have deep tap roots, and i consider themthe best permaculture teachers and permaculture plants of the world. because they’re deeptap roots pull up the minerals into their

leaves. then they compost every year in thefall, and then rebuild top soil. their roots aerate and break up that compaction and bringin the earth worms and all the microorganisms. so basically they’re the fast regeneratorsof the earth. so not only are they food and medicine for us, but they’re actually regeneratingthe earth from our disturbance. so we need our weeds. awesome, so what’s the weed thatwe’re looking at now? the three leaf clover, with its roots so deep, pulls up mineralsfrom 100 feet. when you eat that clover flower and leaf, it builds your bones and strengthensyour teeth. so clover is one of these plants that really has one of the best mineral drawingcharacter. and so i like to eat them just directly or dry them. make tea. and sometimesgreen powder too. and just as a caution, with

the clover family, it’s got three leaves,and they all taste different. and this is a caution about all these wild 13, is thatevery time you come upon one of them, even if you’ve met it a million times before,always reintroduce yourself both out of respect and say thank you, and also taste it. andby doing that, your tongue will tell your body. because you’re smart, you’re brilliant.and your body will tell you how much you need, and your tongue will tell you. so taste it.if it’s delicious, you can add a lot. you can throw some in your smoothie. you can drya bunch in your green powder. but if it’s really potent, then just use a little. andyour tongue will tell you when to stop. awesome, so another thing about the clover is thatyou could wild harvest the clover seeds and

then sprout them in your kitchen, and thenhave clover sprouts! i mean, they sell clover sprouts in the grocery store. and i want youguys to eat out of your garden, out of your yard, wild foods, instead of out of the grocerystore as much as possible. eating your own wild harvest and stuff and sprouted stuffat home will allow you to do that. next, we have another wild edible we found right here.and no, that’s not what you’re looking at here. these are the roses. rose petalsactually are edible but they’re not one of the 13 for the scope of this video or forkatrina’s book. so katrina, which one do we have here? so this one is in this one isin the malvaceae family, so it’s a malva, or a mallow. which either one is a hollyhock.and the hollyhock is so amazing. the hollyhock,

it’s also in the okra family. so okra ispart of it, so it’s got that slimy caliginous quality. and when you it, it actually, yeah,it’s really a cool texture. and by eating it, it draws out toxins that we might be carryingaround in our fat cells or in our lungs. i mean, really, it’s just like it gently movesit out of our respiratory system. but the mallow is also very delicious. sometimes itcan grow this big, and you can make a burrito out of it. it makes a great burrito. and thewhole thing is edible, so you can eat the flowers and the seed pods and anywhere there’sa common mallow that grows a lot, especially in people’s gardens, or this really biggermallow, the hollyhock. so mallow is mellow and good for your skin. it’s slimy and demulsifying.grind the whole plant into a goo. it makes

fabulous lotion and shampoo. awesome, so yeah,i mean many of you guys might be using bottled and packaged shampoos and lotions and thingsto put on your skins. but these have a lot of toxins in them and chemical additives thatwe do not want to be putting on our bodies, because if we’re putting something on ourbody, guess what, it’s going in our body. so katrina, how can we make a lotion out ofthis mallow? so what’s fun about it is that you can make your lotion by just taking themallow, the roots, stem, flowers, the entire plant if you wanted to pull it out. thankthe plant, of course. and then chop it up, put it in water, and what happens after anhour of it sitting in water, is that the water turns into egg white goo. like total thickslime. and that’s the base of your lotion

and your shampoo. if you want to make lotion,then add a little coconut butter or a little essential oil. you can always thicken it withcucumber or avocado. and that makes such a hydrating skin lotion. and then for shampoo,using another one of the 13s which is lamb’s quarter. and you can use the roots of lambquarter, which has saponin in the roots, and that makes the sudsy quality. so you got aslimy suds for your shampoo. awesome, awesome. one of my favorite foods is the mallow. iactually grow that in my garden. i grow tree mallow, it’s a purple flower tree mallow.has those nice burrito like leaves you can eat. be sure to check my past video. i’llput a link down below this video for my episode on the tree mallow that i love so much. aw,wonderful. awesome. so let’s see if we can

find another wild food in this neighborhood.so we’re walking down the street, looking for more wild edibles to share with you guys.katrina walked right by this one, but i saw it, my expert eye. because this is one i actuallygrow in my garden because i believe it is so valuable. and katrina, what do we havehere? purslane is juicy and pretty. rose in the cracks of every single city. that’spurslane, which is so packed with vitamin c and it’s so delicious, succulent, lotsof water in there. there’s more omega 3 fatty acids than fish. it’s really an incrediblefood. awesome, yeah, and i see this one is actually going to seed here, so we can actuallycollect the baby black seeds right here, and we could take them home and grow them. wecould also eat these, rich like she said,

in omega 3 fatty acids. yes, they’re anincredible food. and in a lot of farmer’s markets around the world, you’ll find purslanebeing sold as a vegetable. but, it grows without you even having to do anything. so definitely,eat purslane. yeah, even in mexican markets, they’ll sell this as a vegetable. in manymexican markets, you could just buy this stuff. now i do want to let you guys know, thereare wild forums of purslane that grow kind of wild and kind of sprawl out, have smallerleaves, and then there’s also garden varieties, a more erect kind that actually grow largerleaves, more abundant leaves, and grow a little bit taller. so i encourage you guys to growall the different varieties of purslane and see which one grows best in your garden. yahoo!all right, let’s see if we can find another

wild food here in the neighborhood. so welooked all over the neighborhood, trying to find you guys some plantain. but let me tellyou, when we’re in a neighborhood where people have nice manicured lawns because there’san hoa association. they’ll write tickets, literally, and find you for not having itall perfect and having weeds because they don’t want weeds. we were still able tofind this many weeds that we showed you guys. and this is how resilient they are. we’regoing to go inside and talk about the other ones that we were not able to find and we’llshow good pictures on the video. but i want to give you guys some extra credit. this isnot one of the 13, but i also want to let you guys that there are many different treesthat you can harvest the leaves from. one

of which is right here. i know almost allyou guys know, it’s a pine tree. another one that i really like, actually really deliciousleaves is a linden tree. but, katrina, why don’t you tell us about this extra creditthat’s not part of the original 13, but that’s also quite edible, and how this wouldbe used. right, so this is one of the evergreen trees. it’s a pine. and all the evergreentrees, whether it’s a pine or a spruce or a fir, they’re all edible. these pine needles,these needles. and they have an incredible amount of vitamin c and natural msn that comesfrom the atmosphere that accumulates in this needles year after year, day after day. andso, i like to just eat them when i pass them by, because they all taste different. or wheni find one that i really like, which, this

is actually a really choice one. i like toactually put them in my blender and make a green juice. and i’ll just add a small handfulof pine needles, maybe chop them a few times, and maybe sweeten it with a little apple.blend it up, strain it out, and you’ve got this amazing green juice from the evergreenpine needles. wow, that sounds so amazing katrina! you made me so hungry! let’s goahead and try that right now! okay, we’ll see you inside. so now we’re inside thekitchen. we’ve got our wild harvest and only a few more ingredients that you needto add to make a delicious wild blended drink here. and you guys could do this with prettymuch any blender, although i do recommend a high power blender because some of thesewild foods, especially if they’re more mature

get a little fibrous. and the standard householdblenders that are not super powerful won’t break up the fibers and extract and explodeall the nutrients into the blender craft. so katrina, why don’t you explain the ingredientsthat we’re going to use today in our very simple juice. okay, so really you can useany of the wild 13 to make your green juice. the ones we chose to use today is the sowthistle, these are thistle greens. and then we use the fresh grass that was just growingoutside. this wild young grass. and then we chose to—since we had these pine needles,they add a nice vitamin c lemony twang. so we’re using the pine needles and then anapple. and then we’re going to use water. purified water. and this could be spring waterbut i think it’s just purified water. so

we’re going to go ahead and get started.we’re going to cut the apple in half. i like to put apple seeds in my juice, so theapple seeds are a great source of b17. litro. so a little bit is one of those preventativethings that help break down inferior proteins in the body. so every now and then, throwin your apple seeds. i know you guys might be thinking, “but i heard apple seeds containcyanide!” so how would you respond to this? so they do. but it’s in a food form. soif you don’t overdo it, if you don’t eat a gallon bushel of the seeds all in one sitting,they’re fine. it’s a very, very diluted amount, and it actually acts as a really powerfulmedicine to get rid of proteins that are no longer useful for your body. which could includetumors. so it’s a really powerful preventative.

one of the things is the dose is the poison.and let’s talk about that, especially in respect to the wild foods, because they’rewild, they’re not like mellow leafy greens you might grow in your garden with all thelatex or light sap taken out of them. you could eat wild lettuce, but it’s a littlemore powerful. so let’s talk about how much of these wild foods you might want to include.as you’ll notice, we’re putting a lot water to dilute this down because these foodsare very powerful. that’s right. and when you’re first introducing your body to thewild food, you do, you want to go slow. because they’re way more powerful than the lettuceyou buy at the supermarket. so you don’t need to eat a lot of them. start with a littlebit and see how you feel. and then build up

once you know the plant and you know yourbody and you know the relationship. and even then you always still introduce yourself tothat specific plant, because it’s always new. it’s growing in a new place, new time,new stage of its growth, and you’re new. so always go slow and be cautious. so theseare the wild—we already put in the apple and the grass, the young grass, and this isthe sow thistle, gonna put that in. and then we’re going to put the pine needles in.then we’re going to add water. so i wanna say we are making basically a juice with theblender. now while you can do this, this is not a method i would recommend, i do havea video on why you shouldn’t use your blender as a juicer, kinda like what we’re doing.it’d be much more effective in my opinion

to use a slow juicer, run all these thingsthrough the slow juicer to get the juice out and then add some water to it. basically,real quick, the blender actually runs at a very high speed, so basically it oxidizesand adds air into the mixture more, so you’re not getting the highest quality. but you know,once again, this stuff, whether it’s blended or juiced, is far better than any processedfood, any junk food, and even many animal foods out there in my opinion. and just onenote on that, why i do actually also just use the blender as part of my teaching isthat most people have a blender and you can go out and spend 30 bucks and get one, evena cheap kind, and make your green juice. and so it’s not—even though you could getmore high powered juicer, but that’s more

like 300 dollars. this just makes it accessibleto everybody. yeah, i mean i totally agree with that. i think it’s far better to buya cheap blender and do this than rather to not do it and make excuses up in your head.“oh i can’t do that because i can’t afford a 300 dollar blender!” i mean, ifyou got the 300 bucks extra and you want to do the best you can, yes! go ahead and dothat. but, you know if you don’t have that, that’s all right, get a blender for freeor for 5 dollars, 10 dollars. they’re on craigslist, or go out the walmart and buya cheap one. so you could get these wild foods in your body because that is the message ofthis video today. great. all right so let’s blend this guy up. so the thing with blending,you guys, you want to remember is you want

to only blend the minimal amount of time toget the blended consistency that you want, so do not over blend. do not just turn iton and leave the room for five minutes. this blender will actually heat it up and actuallycreate a hot soup if you leave it that long. we just blended it to masticate and breakup all the fibers. and now we’re just going to go ahead and strain this up, and look,we didn’t even get all the pine needles out. but it’s perfect. it’s going to beso delicious. and depending on what plants you’re using, sometimes you don’t haveto strain it. so if it’s not high fiber plants—we did strain it because of the grassand the pine needles. but if you’re just doing dandelion or planting or mallow, don’tstrain it, and you’ve got the amazing fiber,

and you could make a smoothie or just drinka little bit of a fibery juice. and that is actually preferred. yeah, of course some peopledon’t like fiber and it might upset their system, so in which case you might want tostrain it even if you don’t have to. i mean, there’s so many options with the wild foods.there’s all these different foods you could try. and you might gravitate to some wildedibles more than others. and katrina, do you want to talk about that? and listeningto your body? yeah, so there’s some wild edibles that are very delicious and mild,like purslane and mallow and the lamb’s quarter and amaranth, they’re pretty mild.they’re like spinach. the ones that are more bitter would be plantain and dandelion.so use those, wait till your tongue gets adjusted

to them. if you like it, go for it. if youfeel like, whoa, that’s too much, just add a little bit, and then build up. but try itagain next week, because your body changes and pretty soon your body recognize the nutrientsand it’ll start to crave it. awesome, i mean the other thing i’d like to add isstart out slow! if you’re not used to doing this stuff, do one apple, a bunch of water,two dandelion leaves, right. you’re probably going to love it because it’s going to tastelike apple juice. and then add more dandelion leaves and like, oh man, when i get up to12 dandelion leaves, this is tasting pretty strong, then guess what, go back to 10. staythere for like a week, and then later build up a little bit slowly and add different kindsof wild foods and experiment with all of them

to see what you’re going to like the best.so i grew up, my family tradition, my mom introduced us to this tradition when i wastwo. but we drink as a family, growing up, i drank a green juice twice a day, every dayof my whole life. and that was 20 minutes before breakfast and 20 minutes before dinner.so i encourage all of you to do a green juice every day. i definitely encourage you guysto do that also, and i do green juice pretty much almost every day myself. cheers! cheers.to the green revolution! wild green revolution. it’s so good. wow! that’s actually amazinggood for just having water, apples, and all those wild greens. we’re getting the nutritionin us, some of the best foods, some of the best free foods that you guys could harvestnear you. this is probably one of the best

ways to get them in you, by blending it up,breaking it up, and adding something a little sweet so that even your kids will like it.i think it’s definitely a good idea to get your kids and your whole family on these wildgreen juices, every single day, two times a day. sounds great to me. we never got sick!awesome. so katrina, let’s go ahead, sit down, share with you guys out there in youtubeland some of the wild foods that we were not able to find and also share some of the informationin your book. i mean, if you thought she was a wealth of knowledge here in person… imean her book is, i don’t know, 300 pages full of information, and even more recipes,so you guys could get these foods in your body, which is so important, which i’m sopassionate about. so now we’re outside again

and i want to encourage you guys to be outsidewhenever you’re able. one of the great things about gardening or harvesting wild foods isthat you’re out in nature. we’re so used to living indoors, we need sun in our livesto make vitamin d and just to get energized with the energy of the sun. also, when you’reharvesting or working in your garden, you’re getting physical exercise. and also, anotherthing, you’re increasing your cognitive abilities, you know, especially when huntingfor wild weeds, because you’re scanning and looking at things in your brain, and you’retrying to figure out, okay is that this, and is it this? and then your brain burns a lotof calories too. anyways, before i go on any other tangents, we got katrina’s book here.and this is her new book that’s now available.

it just came out. it’s actually called thewild wisdom of weeds, thirteen essential plants for human survival. you know there’s a lotof many wild weed books and wild edible books, but this is the one i would recommend overall the others because you know, these are the 13 foods that occur all in nature! themost prevalent and abundant ones that are safe to eat! and you know, that’s why iwant to have her on the show today to share this with you guys. we went over a numberof them already, but now we’re going to go over the other ones that we didn’t getto cover and we didn’t find in the local areas. so katrina, which ones did we findand which ones did we not find yet and what are they? okay, so yeah, just in our shortlittle neighborhood walk, we found 7 of the

13, so there’s six more. one of them isdock, curly dock. eat your dock greens when they’re tender and sour. grind their seedsto make your own flour! so dock is a wild buckwheat. and so it makes an amazing flourthat you can use for breads and crackers, as well as the greens are delicious, likespinach, when they’re young. so that’s one. and then there’s lamb’s quarter andamaranth. guess which one makes the keenwhile plant? both these two are high in protein.eat them for muscles mister clean! so amaranth and lamb’s quarter are two more. and theyhave complete proteins, both in their seeds and their greens, and they make an amazingfood. so that’s—now we’re up to the last. we’re up to 7+3, that’s 9, so thelast three, we’ve got chickweed. chickweed

is tasty and yummy. it happens to grow everywhere,and it’s good for your tummy. and knotweed. knotweed grows low in the ground and it’shard to see it. the funny thing about it, it’s not a weed! so knotweed is a reallycool plant that also grows so many different places and there’s a lot of varieties toit. let’s see, one, two, three, four. what we didn’t see was actually plantain, whichwe almost saw. we saw that yesterday. but plantain is—if you need a first aid kit,plantains seeds are leaves it. chew the leaves into a mash. it helps with bites and stingsand rash. so plantain is an amazing wonder food and an incredible medicine. you alwaysneed to know, just in case you get bit by a poisonous spider or a snake or an insect.it draws out the toxins. and it also draws

infection, and that sort of thing too. wow,so if you thought katrina was a wealth of information, this book is even more of a wealthof this information. and katrina, what prompted you to literally write this book, like 350pages on these 13 wild foods? well, i’m impassioned about quality of life for allbeings on earth. and really moving our society is human. like humanity away from the practiceof spraying these wild weeds all around the nation, and realizing the value of ingestingthem as food and medicine. so two things. one, i love people, and i want people to healthyand happy, and i love the planet earth. and i want it to be healthy and happy. and i’min love with all plants and these wild weeds have been discriminated against. and i justrealized they’re so important that we need

as humans to know about them and ingest them.awesome, yeah i mean, this book looks totally amazing to me. and next, katrina, i want toask you some questions about harvesting wild weeds. because i know after seeing this episode,us harvesting this stuff in some neighbor’s yard, you guys might be thinking. john, katrinatalked about earlier harvesting some wild weeds in the cracks of san francisco. like,can i eat out of cracks in the middle of a city or the middle of new york city, or centralpark? is there car fumes on it and all this kind of stuff? katrina, how would you answera question like, can somebody eat the wild foods growing outside the apartment in newyork city or san francisco that dogs are maybe peeing on it, and how do you really know?well, so you don’t—you can’t know everything.

you do want to be really observant about yourenvironment where you’re harvesting. both your intuition and maybe doing some research.asking some neighbors if you don’t live there and know the patterns. so it’s importantto be mindful of your environment and ideally choose the most clean environment you canharvest. however, when we live in a city, that isn’t always available. so then i goto my intuition. and i use my tongue. and i go slow. and so if i want to eat something,it looks really healthy to me, i feel good about it, i wash it off so if it has dog peeon it, you just wash that it off, no big deal. it’s just a little bit of salts on the urine,no big deal. and sometimes i accidentally eat it without washing and you notice, oh,it’s salty! oh, that means somebody peed

on it! it doesn’t hurt you, necessarily.but anyway, wash them. and really taste it first before you put it into a recipe or anythinglike that. in this book, there’s like a taste test method so that you can go reallyslow. and so it goes into deal about how to do that more safely. but just use your intuition,your taste, and do a little bit at a time. and if you diversify, your body starts tobuild up. i can handle wild foods, i can even handle diverse wild foods growing in the city!and actually, you know, that helps us survive in this current modern time. awesome, i mean,the one thing i would say to you guys out there that might not want to harvest weedsin your cracks. i mean, if you guys live in a big city and you’re buying a conventionalfood, conventionally grown food that are sprayed

with chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizersthat are based upon oil and make it a very, in my opinion, imbalanced crop with imbalancednutrients in it. you know, for me personally, i would rather eat something grown in a citythat a dog peed on than something conventionally grown with chemical herbicides and pesticidesand fungicides on it. any single day of the week! and i’d do that unwashed, right? haha,all right! but i hope you guys would probably wash it. i would rather wash it, you know,so don’t get me wrong. but anyways, let’s talk about that katrina. let’s talk aboutif you’re still buying organically grown food in the store or conventionally grownfood in the stores versus wild food nutrition. katrina, i know you addressed that in yourbook, but what do you say to the people out

there watching this video about this topic?i mean, that’s the exciting thing about the wild foods. nature is so efficient inabundance. and so it’s just the currency of nature is abundance. so these wild greensare just packed with nutrients. like, off the charts in comparison. i mean, i don’tknow, sixty to eighty percent more nutrients can be found in wild foods, and i make thatpercentage. i have read that somewhere, and i can’t absolutely say. no one can say,because every wild food is different, and every grown food in the store is a littledifferent. but just—it is way higher. and you can feel it. like, when you eat it, yourown integrity of being comes alive in a new way. wow, i mean, i would totally agree thatwild foods have more nutrition in them. i

mean, it’s simply for the simple fact, right?a lot of the nutrients in the plants are basically the plants defense system against nature.against sunburn. it makes the really rich pigments, antioxidant pigments that protectit from the sun. and when we eat these pigments, we get that same sun protection, per se. imean these are the antioxidants and phytochemicals and phytonutrients that are basically beingbred out of many conventional foods in favor of being able to store and ship and not bruiseand picked early and all this kind of stuff! all right katrina, so you wrote this bookon the wild foods, and i know you’ve been doing this for over thirty years, and foryou guys out there, i definitely recommend purchasing this books and learning about these13 wild foods. but there are so many other

wild foods in the world that you could beharvesting in your local area. and while you could get a little book or something and compareand learn about these things, i don’t necessarily recommend that. because some of the foodsthat are edible look like foods that are also quite dangerous and could be toxic and poisonousto you guys. so i always recommend looking in your local area to find a wild foods expertthat you could take classes from and people that know more than you so that you can learn.i think that’s the best way, to learn by doing and to get familiarity with the plants.and although there’s not a lot of wild food experts out there, so i know katrina willtravel to you guys. you could hire her to come out and take you on wild food adventuresin your neck of the woods, and share with

you guys the wild foods in your area. so katrina,will you tell my viewers about this service you offer? well i am available to come toyour location and take a group of people on a wild walkabout, and it could be as shortas a day, or it could be as long as a week, where i like to go without food and just eatwild for journeys at a time, and it could be an integrated thing where you maybe bringsome food and we integrate the wild foods into our meals. but that’s a really greatway to learn. and the reason why, i mean i love to share this knowledge with people,but i also want to promote be city, u.s.a, and that’s a new thing going on, where there’sonly two cities in the united states right now that are actually a be city of u.s.a,but any resources that might come from doing

that, i want direct towards more cities gettingthat consciousness, where we just don’t spray. because we care the weeds and we careabout the earth and we start to know how valuable these wild plants are. so yes, i am available.wow, yeah i mean she lives in durango, colorado. she’s done some amazing work with gettingthe park system there to go organic, so this lady is totally amazing. so how can somebodyreach you if they want to do that? so our website is turtlelakerefuge.org, and i checkthat, so you can write messages to me that way, and i’ll respond. awesome. yeah. sokatrina, the last thing i want to say to you guys out there. you guys know that i’m reallyinto my garden. if you’re not already subscribed, be sure to subscribe to my videos, and checkout my past videos, i have over a thousand

videos now on how you guys could grow foodat home! you know, just in your garden and grow the highest quality food and while ido agree that, you know, wild foods is definitely better than conventional food, i do not agreethat wild foods are better than foods grown in my garden with optimal soil condition.but i could even make that better by growing wild foods in my garden. and think about it,darryl here who doesn’t have a garden but is growing all these wild foods. just becausethey’re growing naturally, these wild foods are resilient. so even if you have brown thumbs,you’re not able to grow anything, these wild foods are the best things you shouldgrow. but it’s very hard to get the seeds for you guys. plus, the other thing that ibelieve is we want to become intimate with

these plants. we want to know that these plantsdo their different life stages and life cycles so you can identify them when they’re microgreens, you can identify them when they get a little bit bigger. you can identify themwhen they go to flower and seed, save the seeds, and spread them out to other peopleso that they could grow these wild foods and have the easiest garden ever. but these seeds,you know, some of them are actually controlled substances, and should be grown because theyare considered noxious weeds in some localities. but what of a rage with katrina, world’sfirst, is if you buy her book, and no, don’t buy it from amazon.com, because you will notget this deal. you might get the book for cheaper, but you’ll not get this deal, whichis much more valuable. she’s going to send

you, for a limited time in a limited amountonly, she’s going to send you all the different 13 seeds of these different plants when youbuy her book. from turtlelakerefuge.org. so this is completely amazing. i’ll put thespecial link down below, it’ll be the special link to webpage with this special offer, becausethis is not available anywhere else, because i want you guys to grow these foods in yourgarden, whether you grow them in a raised bed next to your garden, get these seeds introduced.and yes, if you do this, i’m warning you now, they will come up in your regular vegetablegarden. but guess what? an edible weed is a good weed indeed, in my opinion! so yeah,anything you’d like to add to this promotion, katrina? well, thank you john for that amazing,brilliant idea. and truly, you know, a lot

of these seeds will already be in your garden,but if you want seeds to come with the book, then yeah, please order it from turtlelakerefuge,and we’ll send it to you with the book, and it’ll be a great way to learn it moreintimately. and that is wise, to just get to know them in all their different stagesand use them in all their different stages and start experimenting and share the knowledge.and the cool thing about this offer is that when you get the book, you’re going to geta little packet of seeds, and all 13 seeds will be mixed in! and just throw these seedsout, or plant them, or whatever you want to do, and then you’re going to have to gothrough the book and figure out which one is which! but you’re going to be safe, right?this is another thing that’s very important

to me, that you guys are safe when growingfoods. you’re going to be able to identify which one is which, and they’re all goingto be these edible ones, and they’re all going to be safe to eat, especially if youhave kids. great, thank you! awesome, awesome. so yeah, if you want to get this offer, visitturtlelakerefuge.org, once again, put the special link up in the video so you couldtype it in, and also below the video in the comments that you can click on to get thisoffer as soon as it comes out. yeah, definitely highly recommend this book. if you’ve beenwaiting for a wild food weed book, you know, all this time you’ve never bought one, thisis the one you get, you want to get, especially with this offer because i truly believe thatgrowing wild foods that have the already highest

nutrients in the best soil like the practicesi teach by building the soil microorganisms with things like worm gull plus worm castings,rock dust, and kelp meals and all these things. you’ll have the highest quality, best foodon the entire planet. and that’s my message to you guys. all right katrina, any last messagesyou’d like to share with my viewers out there today? oh, love you all! all right,i thank you guys. hope you guys enjoyed this episode. be sure to subscribe and share thisvideo with friends. one of the most important episodes i’ve ever done in my opinion becausethese foods are existing everywhere. i want to thank you katrina, for coming out todayand allowing me to show you on my video and share your valuable information with you guysout there. once again, my name is john kohler

with growingyourgreens.com. we’ll see younext time, and until then, keep on growing!

asian health meal